Michelle Rawlins

Michelle Rawlins is an international award winning freelance journalist with over 20 years’ experience working in print and digital media. Since 2019, she has taught in the journalism department at the University of Sheffield, working across the BA and MA courses.

After learning her trade, Michelle began her freelance career at 23, writing for national newspapers and women’s magazines, concentrating on real life stories – living by the mantra: ‘It’s always the most ordinary of people who have most extraordinary of stories.’

In 2017, Michelle was awarded the International Media Award by Variety, the Children’s Charity after producing a plethora of publicity to help a little boy with cerebral palsy gain the funds he needed to enable him to have life changing surgery and take his first steps.

She loves nothing more than turning words into print and bringing stories that should be told to life for others to hear.

Books

Women of Steel

Michelle Rawlins

True stories of love and loss during WWII from a band of tough Northern women.

When war broke out, the young women of Sheffield had their carefree lives turned upside down. With their sweethearts being sent away to fight, they had no choice but to step into the men’s shoes and became the backbone of the city’s steel industry. Through hard toil and companionship in the gruelling world of factory work, they vowed to keep the foundry fires burning and ensured that soldiers had the weapons, planes and ships needed to secure victory over Hitler.

Women of Steel is the last chance to hear these unsung heroines’ voices, as they share first-hand how a group of plucky young women rallied together to win the war for Britain. When the men returned from the front in 1945, many of these women tragically found themselves discarded ‘like yesterday’s fish and chip wrappers’. But decades later, a grassroots campaign spearheaded by the elderly Women of Steel finally brought their remarkable story to light.